Language vs. grammatical tradition in Ancient India: How real was Pāṇinian Sanskrit? (original) (raw)
Related papers
2013
There are certain discrepancies between the forms and constructions prescribed by Pāṇinian grammarians and the forms and constructions that are actually attested in the Vedic corpus (a part of which is traditionally believed to underlie Pāṇinian grammar). Concentrating on one particular aspect of the Old Indian verbal system, viz. the morphology and syntax of present formations with the suffix ‑ya-, I will provide a few examples of such discrepancy. I will argue that the most plausible explanation of this mismatch can be found in the peculiar sociolinguistic situation in Ancient India: a number of linguistic phenomena described by grammarians did not appear in Vedic texts but existed within the semi-colloquial scholarly discourse of the learned community of Sanskrit scholars (comparable to Latin scholarly discourse in Medieval Europe). Some of these phenomena may result from the influence of Middle Indic dialects spoken by Ancient Indian scholars, thus representing syntactic and morphological calques from their native dialects onto the Sanskrit grammatical system.
Linguistics in Premodern India
Published in "Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics". Ed. Mark Aronoff, New York, Oxford University Press, 2018
Indian linguistic thought begins around the 8 th-6 th centuries BC with the composition of Padapāṭhas (word-for-word recitation of Vedic texts where phonological rules are not applied). It took various forms over these twenty-six centuries and involved different languages (Ancient, Middle and Modern Indo-Aryan as well as Dravidian languages). The greater part of documented thought is related to Sanskrit (Ancient Indo-Aryan). Very early, the oral transmission of sacred texts-the Vedas, composed in Vedic Sanskrit-made it necessary to develop techniques based on a subtle analysis of language. The Vedas also-but presumably later-gave birth to bodies of knowledge dealing with language, which are traditionally called Vedāṅgas: phonetics (śikṣā), metrics (chandas), grammar (vyākaraṇa) and semantic explanation (nirvacana, nirukta). Later on, Vedic exegesis (mīmāṃsā), new dialectics (navya-nyāya), lexicography (nighaṇṭu and later, kośa) as well as poetics (alaṃkāra) also contributed to linguistic thought. Though languages other than Sanskrit were described in premodern India, the grammatical description of Sanskrit-given in Sanskrit-dominated and influenced them more or less strongly. Sanskrit grammar (vyākaraṇa) has a long history marked by several major steps (Padapāṭha versions of Vedic texts, Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, Bhartṛhari's works, Siddhāntakaumudī of Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita, Nāgeśa's works) and the main topics it addresses (minimal meaning-bearer units, classes of words, relation between word and meaning/referent, the primary meaning/referent of nouns) are still central issues for contemporary Linguistics.
Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2018
This is an interesting study exploring in a considerable detail the rise of the lowlevel configurationality in New Indo-Aryan from the non-configurationality in early Indo-Aryan. The data were extracted from ca. 60 primary sources (Vedic, Pali, Apabhraṃśa and Old Awadhi). The author concurs with the general assumption that Vedic Sanskrit lacks any phrasal structures. As explicated in Chapter Two ("Grammaticalization and configurationality"), in addition to the free word order (basic SOV, and OSV and VSO making the VP discontinuous) there are no obligatory function words (articles, adpositions) in Vedic Sanskrit which impose phrasal constraints on nominal expressions. At the end of a development that lasted 2000 years, Hindi-while still allowing for free constituent order-has developed low-level configurationality in terms of postpositional phrases, accompanied by a rise of obligatory function words. Thus unlike Sanskrit, Hindi does not allow for discontinuity within the NP(Adj N) or free permutation with respect to the arguments denoting the beneficiary and direct object as in example (40), Raješ= ne (choṭe bacc)e=ko kitāb bhejī 'Rajesh sent the book to the little child' (p. 100). The author shows that in Hindi the "obligatoriness constraint" of the postposition requiring a dependent has no equivalent in Vedic *bacce choṭe ko, *choṭe ko bacce, *choṭe … bacce ko). Interestingly, within the NP adnominal elements (adjectives) do not show distinctive forms for direct and oblique cases in the plural (examples 44 and 46): (choṭ-e kamr-e) =mê 'in the small room' but (choṭ-e kamr-õ) =mê 'in (the) small rooms' (p. 101). In diachronic terms the postpositional phrases are traced back to "asymmetrical groups" consisting of a nominal (or verbal) head and a dependent; thus the above examples would start in Old Indo-Aryan with obligatoriness of AN and GN as (alp-asya veśman-as) madhye (small-GEN room-GEN) middle-LOC 'in the small room' and (alp-ānām veśman-ām) madhy-e (small-GEN.PL room-GEN.PL) middle-LOC 'in the small rooms'. The diverse origins of the Hindi simple postpositions are surveyed in Chapter Three ("The diverse origins of the Hindi simple postpositions") with
Journal of Language Relationship, 2011
Drifting between passive and anticausative. True and alleged accent shifts in the history of Vedic ¢presents This paper focuses on the system of the Vedic present formations with the suffix ya-and middle inflexion, paying special attention to the attested accent patterns. On the basis of a study of the paradigmatic and syntactic features of this verbal formation we can conclude that the traditional analysis of some members of this class in terms of the passive/nonpassive (anticausative) opposition is inadequate. I will offer a short overview of the history of this class, concentrating, in particular, on several accent shifts which account for a number of exceptions to the general correlation between the semantics and accent placement (passives: accent on the suffix vs. non-passives: accent on the root). Some of these shifts can be dated to the prehistoric (Common Indo-Aryan?) period (cf. suffix accentuation in such non-passives as mriyáte 'dies'), while some others must be features of certain Vedic dialects, dating to the period after the split of Common Indo-Aryan.
The Vedic -ya-presents: Passives and intransitivity in Old Indo-Aryan
2012
This book is the first comprehensive study of the Vedic present formations with the suffix -ya- ('-ya-presents' for short), including both present passives with the accented suffix -yá- and non-passive-ya-presents with the accent on the root (class IV in the Indian tradition). It offers a complete survey of all -ya-presents attested in the Vedic corpus. The main issue in the spotlight of this monograph is the relationship between form (accent placement, diathesis) and function (passive/non-passive) in the system of the -ya-presents – one of the most solidly attested present classes in Sanskrit. One of the aims of the present study is to corroborate the systematic correlation between accent placement and the passive/non-passive distinction: passives bear the accent on the suffix, while non-passives have the accent on the root. The book also focuses on the position of the passive within the system of voices and valency-changing categories in Old Indo-Aryan. Leonid Kulikov (PhD, Leiden University) is an Assistant Professor at Ghent University. He has published widely on synchronic and diachronic typology (in particular, on the diachronic typology of labile verbs and valency-changing categories), on the Vedic verb system and syntax, and on Vedic philology, and has edited numerous volumes in the fields of linguistic typology and Indology. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Historical Linguistics. His current research focuses on the grammar of early Vedic, a translation of the Atharvaveda, and the diachronic typology of transitivity and voice.
Selected writings on Indian linguistics and philology
1997
Introduction (by M. Witzel). A. PAN-INDIAN. DRAVIDIAN AND MUNDA STUDIES. B. VEDIC AND IRANIAN STUDIES. C. NOTES ON VEDIC NOUN-INFLEXION. Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, 5/4, pp. 161-256. Word index (by A. Lubotsky and M.S. Oort). Errata.
Themes and Tasks in Old and Middle Indo-Aryan Linguistics 2006
The Volume under review comprises twelve papers authored by as many scholars that were initially presented at the 12th World Sanskrit Conference (Linguistics section) held at Helsinki Finland in July, 2003. The papers included in the Volume relate to several themes from historical phonology, morpho-syntax, etymology of OIA, to Iranian loan words and computer processing of Sanskrit. The Volume opens with "The development of PIE *sć into Sanskrit/(c)ch/" authored by Masato Kobayashi wherein the earlier positions on the issue are revisited and with ample data from PIE, PIIr, OIA and MIA, the author concludes that the PIIr *ć is considered to have been a palatal affricate, hence the *sć cluster involved three obstruent phases in two consonant slots (*st∫). Consequently, by the general rule of simplification, the clusterinitial consonant *s was lost leaving behind t∫, spread to two consonant slots. In pre-Vedic phonology "the feature [aspirated] was redundantly specified for all sibilants, as the sandhi -tś->cch reflects. Finally, [t∫] was phonemicized as an aspirate/(c) ch/and filled in the empty place of an aspirated voiceless palatal plosive in the consonant inventory of OIA." Hans Henrich Hock in "Reflexivization in the Rig-Veda (and beyond)" presents more evidence from Rig-Veda to demonstrate that "the reflexive possessive is complementary to middle voice verb inflection, marking the one constituent that cannot be expressed on the verb, namely the nominal genitive relation; and that the full reflexive (RV tanū′) is indeed a very recent innovation, whose development can still be traced in the Rig-Veda". The complementarity of the reflexive possessive and middle voice is based upon the arguments that "nominal genitive relation is fundamentally different from that of the case relations of verbal complements" and the adnominal genitive relation is not subcategorized on the verb". Rejecting Lehmann"s (1974) observation that PIE had no reflexive pronouns at all, (it marked reflexivization on the verb, as middle voice), simply meaning "own", Hock demonstrates that sva-does behave as a reflexive in several instances in Rig-Veda and that in the RV, (Book 10) there are some instances of the use of tanū′ as a clear reflexive, with verb in the active voice, which is an innovation and the first attestation of the later Vedic and Classical pattern in which a reflexive pronoun, nominal in origin (RV tanū′, later ātmán) has been reinterpreted as the major marker of reflexivization.